1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image processing apparatus having a proper image discrimination function and suitably used in a digital copying machine, a facsimile system or an electronic file.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In a conventional image processing apparatus, when an original containing both character and dot images is reproduced or coded and transmitted, identical reproduction processing identical coding/decoding cannot be performed for the entire original since different image tones (i.e., image properties or characteristics) are included in the original. For this reason, the different image tones in the original must be discriminated, and various implementations have been proposed for this purpose. However, it is difficult to provide a processing apparatus with a function for discriminating different image tones at high processing speed with a small hardware arrangement. It is also difficult to accurately discriminate a dot image and a line image such as characters.